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Scritti Politti are a British band, originally formed in 1977 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. Although there have been various changes to the line-up, Cardiff-born singer-songwriter Green Gartside was the founding member of the band and the only member to have remained throughout the group's history.
Initially a left-wing-inspired post-punk British rock group, Scritti Politti developed into a more mainstream pop music project in the early to mid 1980s, enjoying significant success in the record charts in the UK and the US. Scritti Politti originally consisted of Gartside (born Paul Julian Strohmeyer) as the lead vocalist, Nial Jinks as bass player, Tom Morley as drummer, and Matthew Kay as the manager who sometimes played the keyboard. Morley also created much of the artwork on the band's album covers. Gartside and Jinks had gone to school together in South Wales, and Gartside met Morley at Leeds Polytechnic, a college they both attended. They played one show as The Against in 1976, doing covers of Chelsea songs. Disillusioned and bored with art school, Gartside and Morley left in June 1978 and moved into a squat at 1 Carol Street in Camden Town, London. Jinks was invited to join the band. Gartside taught him how to play the bass in three weeks.
Gartside recorded a demo of one of his new songs, "The "Sweetest Girl"", in January 1981, and the song was included on the C81 cassette compilation obtained with tokens from the March issues of NME. The song prompted many major labels to offer Gartside record contracts, but he decided to stay with Rough Trade. By August 1981, Scritti Politti's debut album was complete and ready for release, but Gartside wanted to wait, most likely because he could not decide on a title. "The "Sweetest Girl"" was released as a single in November and reached only #64 on the UK music chart, but was cited by The New York Times as one of the ten best singles of the year. The single was later covered by pop band Madness, with their version reaching #35 in the UK singles chart in 1986. Nial Jinks also temporarily rejoined the band around this time. The band's music was characterized by sophisticated studio production, Gartside's sly, punning word play — influenced by his reading of deconstruction (the group's 1982 debut album, Songs to Remember, features a song called "Jacques Derrida") — and the tension between the polished pop-funk stylings of their music and the subtle radicalism of the political and social messages embedded in their lyrics.
The group's most successful album, 1985's Cupid & Psyche 85, spawned three UK Top 20 hits with "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)", "Absolute", and "The Word Girl", as well as a US Top 20 hit with "Perfect Way". The personnel for this album differed from that of their first album, and featured keyboardist David Gamson and ex-Material drummer Fred Maher, both of whom would collaborate with Gartside on songwriting and production duties. Arif Mardin would also produce three songs for the album.
This new line-up remained for the band's next album, 1988's Provision. This album was a Top 10 success, though it only produced one Top 20 hit ("Oh Patti"). After releasing a couple of non-album singles in the early 1990s, as well as a collaboration with B.E.F., Gartside became disillusioned with the music industry and retired to South Wales for the rest of the decade. He returned to music-making in the late 1990s, releasing two critically acclaimed albums, 1999's Anomie and Bonhomie (which included various rap and hip hop influences) and 2006's stripped-down White Bread, Black Beer which returned to the more experimental era of the band's history.
The name Scritti Politti was chosen as a homage to the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci: The name is generally understood to refer to Gramsci's political writings (although the correct spelling in Italian would have produced "Scritti Politici"). Gartside changed it to 'Scritti Politti' as he thought it sounded more rock and roll, like "Tutti Frutti".
In the mid 1970s, Gartside was studying fine art at Leeds College of Art and Design (now Leeds College of Art). The Sex Pistols 'Anarchy' tour which included The Damned and The Heartbreakers was launched at Leeds Polytechnic on 6 December 1976, and inspired Gartside to form a band with his childhood friend Nial Jinks, and fellow student Tom Morley. For their first public performance supporting local Leeds punk group SOS the group went under the name 'The Against'. Upon finishing their studies the group relocated to London's Camden Town around 1977 where they lived in a squat at 3 Regent's Park Road and in the Carol St. Collective. Alongside other groups of what has been termed the DIY ethic or movement (notably the Desperate Bicycles and Steve Treatment, the latter being associated with the Swell Maps), the group released a DIY record titled "Skank Bloc Bologna" on their own St. Pancras label in 1978. This appropriation of the means of production, to quote from the Marxist parlance that can be heard among the lyrics of these early works, might well have been equally inspired by the group's initial admiration for, and contact with, the avant-garde left-wing rock band Henry Cow.
To the raw energy of punk, Scritti Politti added a creative spontaneity and a mock-philosophical intelligence in their lyrics, with scholarly allusions to Marx, Bakunin, Derrida, Deleuze, and Lacan. In early tracks, the punk-like fracturing of language and spikiness of the sound were held together by more lyrical melody than the more austere music of other left-field groups from the post-punk scene, such as Gang of Four, London art-rockers This Heat or the Bristol based The Pop Group.
"Skank Bloc Bologna" picked up airplay on John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show, and the band were signed to Rough Trade under Geoff Travis in 1979, making them labelmates with the other Cardiff avant-garde band, Young Marble Giants. Scritti Politti released two EPs in 1979 with singles "Bibbly-O-Tek", "Doubt Beat", "OPEC/Immac" and "Hegemony". "Hegemony" led to more melodic songs such as "Confidence", which in turn hinted at the direction the band would take in the 1980s. Gartside then slimmed the band down to a three piece.
By the time of "4 A-sides", a blend of strong melody and rhythmic jaggedness had been achieved. The band exhibited an explicit do-it-yourself attitude, which manifested itself in their hand-made record sleeves with detailed breakdowns of production costs, including addresses and phone numbers of record pressing plants, and even their own Camden squat address for feedback.
Members
Green Gartside
Alyssa McDonald
Dave Ferrett
Rhodri Marsden
Dicky Moore
Past members
Nial Jinks
Tom Morley
Joe Cang
Marcus Miller
Steve Ferrone
Paul Jackson Jr.
Fred Maher
David Gamson
Allan Murphy
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